Jesuit priest 'was not denounced' by Pope Francis

A Jesuit priest kidnapped by the Argentine junta in the 1970s has said he and
a fellow cleric were not denounced by the future Pope Francis.

Francisco Jalics was kidnapped in 1976Photo: AP

By Associated Press

8:10PM GMT 20 Mar 2013

Francisco Jalics, a Hungarian native who now lives in a German monastery, said that he was following up on comments about the case last week because he had received a lot of questions and "some commentaries imply the opposite of what I meant."

He did not elaborate.

Fr Jalics and another priest, Orlando Yorio, were kidnapped in 1976.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, has said he told the priests to give up their work in slums for their own safety, and they refused. Yorio, who is now dead, later accused Fr Bergoglio of effectively delivering them to the death squads by declining to publicly endorse their work.

In a statement last Friday, Fr Jalics said that and Fr Bergoglio had long since reconciled. He said they "hugged" at a meeting in 2000, and that he considered the matter closed.

Fr Jalics said in that statement, posted on the German Jesuits' website, that he "cannot comment on the role of Father Bergoglio in these events."

He elaborated on Wednesday, saying: "The fact is: Orlando Yorio and I were not denounced by Father Bergoglio."

He said "false information was spread" at the time that he and Yorio had gone to the slums because they were part of a guerrilla movement - and he suspects those rumours were the reason why the priests were held for five monthsn't freed immediately.

Opinions have differed on how much responsibility the new pope personally deserves for the Argentine Catholic Church's dark history of supporting the murderous dictatorship.

The new pope's authorised biographer, Sergio Rubin, argues that the Catholic Church in general failed to confront the junta, and Argentine human rights activists have noted that Bergoglio never collaborated with the dictatorship.

The Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, said last week that Francis has never been accused of any crime, that he had denied all accusations against him and that on the contrary "there have been many declarations demonstrating how much Bergoglio did to protect many persons at the time."